


it seemed the taste, was not so sweet

by theatrythms



Category: Booksmart (2019)
Genre: Burnout - Freeform, College, F/F, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, college is very hard for Molly, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 08:14:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19390117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatrythms/pseuds/theatrythms
Summary: “Do you feel,” She breaths, too tired for three am, too tired for her nine am, too stupid to write about the constitution she’s torn apart in high school debates and essays, too tired to feel small and stupid in Yale. “Like college would be easier.”





	it seemed the taste, was not so sweet

**Author's Note:**

> started writing this as imagining what if jared became the friend that Molly does the long-distance friendship routine with and it turned into looking at college being a very lonely place , that I wrote in maybe four hours . I just finished my first year in college and really felt like of all characters , of all people , that would be a bit over their head , it would be Molly . not to make it out like first year of college is all bad, bc it isn't, but it's a major life change , esp like in America where moving across the country is more normal . btw , I'm from Ireland, and our education system isn't like Americas and I don't know enough abt Yale to be less than vague. also genuinely what is a spring break  
> title is from changes by David bowie !  
> edit 11/7/2019 : I get that hadestown opened in March but booksmart is set in May but please gloss over that I knew instantly that Jared would adore the kind of content hadestown is bringing to broadway okay just ignore that lol

_Connecticut is such an egg noodle of a state._

_Connecticut is like the highschooler wrestling_

_with whether or not he can pull off a baseball cap or not._

_\- Chris Fleming_

Surprisingly enough, the person that fills the Amy-shaped hole in her long-distance friendship she thought she’d be starting college with, is actually Jared.

“MIT isn’t Columbia, and it’s not like, in New York or anything, but it’s Boston, and on the East Coast, like Yale is.” Jared is too awkward for human words, for the human experience, but he sits with her when one of their still relatively new Tuesday hangs ends with her crying about how much she misses Amy. “I’ll be your long-distance friend when you need one. We’ll all need a little corner of LA with us when we leave.”

“I thought Gigi would be your long-distance friend.” Molly sniffles, wiping her nose with one of the tissues she keeps tucked into her sleeve.

“MIT and Harvard are like, six minutes away from each other.” Jared shrugs her off, vaguely bemused. “We’re gonna be roommates.”

They planned it like that, Molly guesses, and wishes she grew up obsessed with Dartmouth, or even better, wanting to go to Columbia. It was MollyandAmy when they were sharing study notes, waking each other up for every extra curricular at whatever god awful time in the morning, and then they agreed that it would be Molly and Amy when they filled out their application letters.

But Yale is Molly’s, the same way it’s Annabelle’s, and the same way Columbia is Amy’s. MIT belongs to Jared, even if revolutionising Broadway is where his true heart lies. And Harvard is Gigi’s.

“Well, I’ll think about it.” Molly says instead, rather than outright reject him, or outright say yes, yes, yes, because then it makes her soon too eager and absolutely no one wants to come across like that.

(They’ve kissed a bit, and Molly has already said, in detail, to Amy, that if the time would ever come she’d be up for a little bit more than just _kissing a bit_ and Amy told her to be mindful that she doesn’t go for his asshole first.)

But Jared smiles, and lets her drop him home.

xx

She leaves for Yale on a balmy, August Monday, armed with her Pinterest moodboards, her various frames for all of her female idols, and a check-in-list that she can neatly tick everything off. She also brings a fresh bullet journal, and Skypes Amy as soon as her and her mom get off the plane.

“It really is like that episode of Gossip Girl.” Amy notes. Molly has never actually been to Yale, she just did so well on admissions and getting in, that visiting seemed something that could wait for a first reveal, unboxing-type moment, ripping the shiny wrapping paper off of the brick walls and towering churches.

“With the secret society?”

“Doesn’t Nate hook up with someone?” Mom quips, just as bemused at the sight of the green trees lining the paths.

“Yeah, I think it was a secret society person.”

“Please,” Amy’s voice moves faster than her mouth. “Join the secret society.”

“You absolutely know I will.” There are few clubs and hobbies Molly never tried throughout her entirety of education, and she’s not about to lose that streak in college.

Mom helps her set up her room, helps her take the photos of her inspirational women out of their individual envelopes and into their frames, help her polish the frames, helps her put up her corkboard and set up her bedsheets. Her roommate doesn’t come until tomorrow, or so her roommate’s direct message on Facebook says. Imogen Harper has straight black hair and wears her highschool graduation gown in her profile picture, lists her languages as Vietnamese and Spanish, and her instagram is full of throw-backs to various travels across Europe during the summer.

She was never intimidated by her peers in high school, but going to public school and living with your mom in an apartment in LA is different. Molly is surrounded by second, third generation students at Yale, who don’t go through financial aid, who are also part of elite classes and went to high schools with crests and uniforms, and kneehigh socks and horrible scandals like buying their way into college.

Mom leaves, and will get a flight back to LAX tomorrow morning. Jules Davidson kisses her daughter once, twice, three times on her cheeks, and makes her promise she’ll call at least twice a week, and remember that this is all she’s ever wanted, so take it slow, okay? For mom.

Molly spends her first night in college by herself, in a dorm room half-full of the things she brought with her, unfamiliar mattress.

She cries, admittedly, when she realises there’s nothing in this dorm that Amy has seen, or touched, or been around, and then Molly can’t help but wonder if Jared is having as strange as a time up in MIT.

xx

The thing about being valedictorian and studying law in an ivy league school, is that this isn’t an abnormal situation. In high school, there’s valedictorian and salutatorian, only two positions, in a year of hundreds. In the Yale 2023 class, it seems like being anything less than that is unacceptable.

Molly thought having that wakeup call on the last day of school would shake the weird, entitled complex she’d honed and tended to for so long. But Yale, and the student body of Yale, didn’t, and kept it, like a little pet.

Molly left high school as the best in her class, now she’s in a college full of people who were all the best in their class.

No one said that was gonna happen.

xx

On the third week, while writing her first college paper, she facetimes Jared in some sort of lucid, strange moment, three red bull cans in. Imogen is like the average Yale student, who seemingly masquerade as perfect teenagers living the true experience, and finding time to study. It’s the first time since Amy left, that she wasn’t able to pick up her call, citing that she’s trekking out of her homestay to an even more remote village for the week and she’ll call and text ASAP.

Jared picks up, strangely fast, wide awake at what she can only presume is a desk, with a pile of monster cans next to his elbow. He knocks them over when her face shows up.

“Well this is a surprise!” He laughs, toasting his can to her. Molly feels silly, but she does it back, and his smile only widens.

“Do you feel,” She breaths, too tired for three am, too tired for her nine am, too stupid to write about a consitituion she’s torn apart in high school debates and essays, too tired to feel small and stupid in Yale. “Like college would be easier.”

Jared makes a face, like he understands but he doesn’t, like he wants to but he can’t, like he doesn’t get that college, in a way, was built for him, and MIT and planes and technical school is meant for him.

Same way Yale was made for her.

She wishes she felt less confused, less doubtful, even if she loves her lectures and loves the handful of friends she’s made in her class, and the friends and soon-to-be rivals in Model UN and the political society.

Jared might not understand, but he’s there, and he listens, and laughs when she reaches below her desk and grabs another can of red bull to chug.

“Maybe you should talk to Amy about all of this?” Jared suggests, as the rosy sun only starts to peer through the window. “I’m glad you’re not like, keeping it to yourself, but you should talk to Amy, she’ll know more to help.”

Telling Amy that she thinks college, and Yale, and everything, is a mistake, is one thing Molly does not intend to do.

She lies to Jared. “I’ll tell her, of course, as soon as she’s back to talk in a week.”

Jared brightens. “Good, you better.”

xx

Her first less-than-stellar-grade comes halfway through semester one, and it feels like the world will fall apart.

“It’s gonna ruin my whole gpa.”

“It won’t ruin your gpa.” Amy says, trying to sound as soothing as possible.

“Yeah but my TA fucking ripped into me. It was just. Mean.” She finishes lamely, remembering the people she went to high school with who got bad grades and blamed their teachers, not themselves, for their lack of preparation or ability. And now, Molly is one of those, cursing out her TA rather than going over the notes she left to improve her exam. “Did you know how much required reading they give you? I think I’m gonna drown. And textbooks are so expensive I think I’m gonna kill my computer with all of the viruses I’m gonna get.”

Amy sends her a sympathetic, and sad look, almost longing, as if all she wants in the world is to be there with her.

(That’s what Molly wants too.)

“Listen, if anyone is ready for college, it’s you. You know what Miss Fine said, any guidance counsellor, that psychic we went to once. You just need to let yourself hang on.” Amy says, smiling gently. “Let the imposter syndrome go, you belong here, even if you don’t think you do.”

Molly feels, better, really, hearing that reassurance from someone that’s not her mom, or Jared, or one of her model UN friends who seems born and bred for Yale. Even Annabelle belongs better than her.

She walks straight into her lecture the next morning, and tries to ignore that weird gnaw in her stomach when exams rolls around.

xx

Molly goes home for Christmas, remembers how weird and lonely LA feels without Amy, now that Yale is her corner of the world untouched by her best friend. Jared gets in two days after her, and it feels like a game of chicken, who will call first, who will check on who first, who will send a suggestive meme on insta.

(Gigi does, for the record, and invites Molly to lunch in some underground place with sweet and savoury french toast.)

“... I’m still undeclared, though,” Gigi finishes her spiele on how her dorm laundry room has definitely become the best place in Harvard to go and study and or smoke pot out of the well-ventilated room. “Why feel that pressure, y’know, why even try and force my energy and aura into one pathway.”

It feels better, Molly thinks, to not be the only one that doesn’t know at all what they’re doing.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing either.” Molly says, slowly, and it feels like a dam breaks loose, right in her chest.

Gigi’s smile is almost, maybe just, victorious, like she’s been waiting for Molly to say it the whole time.

Maybe Molly was waiting too.

xx

Second semester is different, because her modules change, and everything changes, because Jared asks her on an honest to god date.

“Do you like greek mythology?” He says, all in a rush, while Molly’s finishing up a quick post-Christmas lunch session with her UN friends. They’re the first friends she’s had that aren’t, in anyway, a teacher from her school or people not mutual with Amy, and that, for its own, self-explanatory reasons, is weird and new and vaguely exciting, even if she feels sad about it.

“I read Percy Jackson? If that counts.” She’d sat with Amy as they poured over Nico DiAngelo coming out, all of thirteen years old.

“Of course that counts,” Jared scoffs. “Anyway, spring break. What are your plans?”

“Haven’t really thought of them.”

“Do you wanna come to New York with me? There’s this insane, crazy, amazing folk greek myth-musical opening on Broadway. I have two tickets for a preview.”

She’s only heard him sound so nervous, so unsure, only once, and that was his pre-grad party on the boat. Molly can only hope, only wish, that MIT treats him better than high school did, better than Molly did.

“Of course, I’d love to go.” Molly answers, without thinking of the fact that’s two whole weeks in New York with a guy who’s touched her boobs (over the shirt, unfortunately) and gave her a hickey.

“You have to tell me everything.” Amy says, even though it’s a full seven weeks away, and she really should use Spring Break to catch up on her studies and school stuff, not going on a broadway bender with a guy she sorta, kinda, really likes.

“Oh of course I will.”

“Well absolutely yeah you have to.” Amy goes through her weekly updates from Botswana after that, but still ends the phone call with an annoying reminder that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“I’m sure Yale has some like, on campus Planned Parenthood if you need to go on the pill.”

Molly takes a second, drifting to her picture of Lena Wen. Their whole dorm is full of pictures of inspirational women, because Imogen thinks its cool as fuck, and now they have Monday takeout after they use the showers. Like friends do, Molly thinks, with a warm chest.

(The last, fateful day of high school taught her everything isn’t as it seems, which is why she’s not surprised when Imogen says she’s changed her major drastically and doesn’t want to tell her parents.)

Molly considers it, but also doesn’t, because how presumpuative would that be.

xx

(Seven weeks later, reeling from an evening of folk theatre, Molly pulls her lips away from Jared’s and blanches at him, watching his face fall. “I’m not on the pill!”

Jared takes his hands off of her hips, suddenly more aware of everything. “We can stop if you want, I was already gonna use a condom but I don’t want you to feel like-”

She cuts him off, pushing her lips to his and loses her virginity in a suite at the Ritz, of all places, to someone who wants to design aeroplanes and produce Broadway musicals, who feels happy in his skin, in a way only college could’ve made him.)

xx

The first real, actual block, that reminds her of her first weeks in college where she just wanted to get on the first flight into LA, is half way through April, when the end of semester two draws near, and studying for finals and finishing final essays and having a long-distance boyfriend a long-distance best friend feels too much.

She calls Amy, and everything she’s bottled up and hidden from her seems to spill to the surface, like how she feels so out of place there, even if she loves college and learning and studying and hates feeling stupid and slow in her class. There’s two unfinished assignments on her Google Drive due the next week, and another two after that, and everyone said college would be hard but not like this.

No one said college would feel so lonely, even with UN friends, even with a boyfriend, even when you love your classes, and a roommate you get along with.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Amy says, and Molly wishes she could be here with her.

“I didn’t want to scare you.” She mumbles, unable to look her in the eye. “You took a gap year so you wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed, and like…” Molly trails off, gestures to herself lamely. “Like this.”

Amy looks like she wants to fix everything, reach through the screen and hold her. They have a long, long, long conversation about how college feels weird and like a jigsaw doesn’t fit, but Amy helps remind her of Imogen, who changed her major, and undeclared Gigi, and how Molly is definitely not the only person in _Yale_ to feel like they might be in a pond too big for them.

“I might not be there with you, but I know what might help.” Amy promises.

Of all people, she sends Hope, who sleeps on Molly’s floor and helps her through her assignments, like a fairy godmother who knows how to use APA referencing. She gives Imogen travel recommendations, the best hostels across the world, the weirdest places and clubs in Europe, the nooks and crannies in North America, right in their backyard.

“So, what’s actually going on with you and Amy?” Molly blurts, blaming the red bull and not her own ability to never be out of someone’s business.

Hope’s face stays perfectly still, her smile doesn’t falter, doesn’t change. “We… talk.” She says, and Molly wants to push further. “She said you’d let me crash in Connecticut if I came out to check on you. So here I am.” She gestures to the window, to the tall trees beginning to grow again. “In Connecticut.”

Hope doesn’t say anything else about it, until she’s getting on a bus down to Miami, swinging her bag up onto her shoulders. “You know, Amy really does love you.” Hope states it like its a fact, a known principal to the universe, something tried and tested, proven by science. “You’re like, the only person we talk about when we get to.”

Molly doesn’t really know what to say to that part, so she stuttered out an apology.

Hope’s laugh is as clear as a bell, high and sweet. “Don’t apologise, I’m glad I get to witness it. It’s one of the things I miss the most about high school.”

Molly is torn in some weird cycle. She misses high school and she doesn’t. She does and she doesn’t. She regrets that she didn’t have a thousand days like her last day.

“Stay in the now, and try and calm down, okay?” Hope asks, and sends her a kiss with the tips of her fingers. “Amy’ll be back before you know it.”

xx

She passes Annabelle twice a week in the courtyard, when they have classes on opposite sides of campus and they make pleasant small talk about how their college lives are going.

It’s nice to see a familiar face, but also still fills her with so much guilt about what she said when they were in school. Annabelle does gender studies, Annabelle goes to student protests, Annabelle seems much more connected to the rest of the student body than Molly does, and she beats down that weird, gnarling jealousy she had all through high school.

The end of semester rounds the corner, finals just around the bend. Molly once thought working under pressure was a specialty of her’s, but college, like everything else, just makes it more intense.

Annabelle sits across her at a library desk, an array of books and notes and technology around her. Discreetly, Molly pushes a can of red bull across the distance between them, watching as Annabelle smiles, with a quirk in her lip.

It’s not friendship, but it’s a reminder of home, and that’s all Molly needs right now.

xx

“Molly, we gotta get back to the car, the meter could time out, okay, just, let’s drop the hug, we can hug at mine.”

“Nope.”

Amy returns from Botswana with a tan and sunburn, a million and one freckles up and down her face and arms and legs, and an appreciation for tampon vending machines in bathrooms.

“So honestly, how was your first year at college, now that it’s done?”

In an ideal world, Molly would have an answer, Molly would know what to say, Molly would think college is great and fun, and not weird and confusing, or feeling like a shoe she doesn’t fit into, but desperately wants to. Molly wishes she could put into words how… everything, college is, and how everything it’s not.

Molly really just wants her to know that college not being what she wants is okay, even if it’s a thought you never wanted to entertain, because college was this unattainable, uncontrollable dream you wanted, and how could your dreams be wrong?

“It was. Hard to explain.” She summarizes, linking her arm through her’s.

Amy laughs, throwing her head backwards. “I’m here to listen then!”

  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading !!! also they most definitely go see hadestown and jared hosts a yacht Tony party  
> much love to Alex (nebulastucky on here !) for reading it and beta-ing it, she's an absolute gem


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